Artists refusing to play their most popular songs in concert

[Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃]

Aug 25, 2019 16:12:27 GMT -5 Peeetah said:

Aug 24, 2019 12:48:23 GMT -5 Natural Born Farmer said:

Why are you talking like only Europe does this?

There are other bands that open and close with the Final Countdown?

Sammy Hagar used to open and close some shows with “Mas Tequila”

[tankisfreemason]

Aug 24, 2019 11:40:08 GMT -5 Confused Mark Wahlberg said:

Europe would open AND close the show with "The Final Countdown"

Same with some of the best ROH I’ve seen

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Aug 25, 2019 14:28:47 GMT -5 wildojinx said:

What about bands debuting new songs in concert (ie, ones that havent been commercially released yet)?

Not entirely the same, but a band I saw about 12 years ago were playing their first U.K. tour (and their last to date) and had a cover song as part of their set. When the singer asked if we wanted to hear said cover song the response was what I would charitably describe as tepid confusion, prompting the singer to quip "Oh... shit, we'd better rethink this entire set list."

They did continue as planned, and the crowd enjoyed it, but the general feeling was afterwards that an extra track of their own would've been better for a crowd that had never seen them live before than a random cover song.

[paulbearer]

Woman in love (saw Barbra twice in concert....imo it seemed like she just wanted to get it over with , felt half hearted)

[willywonka666]

I believe I'd feel a bit of a responsibility to play certain songs. Ideally, I'd like to throw in covers and surprises often, but I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but after an artist slows down and doesn't release albums as frequently, I don't find the later material very interesting or catchy, and I'd rather quit writing if I couldn't even interest myself and go out an play the hits.

[Deleted]

I'm glad I don't listen to bands that are pretentious enough to not play their hits for the fans who gave them a career based on those hits and bought a ticket to see them played. I've played in bands for 15 years now and would happily play the same thing every night if it meant getting to do what I loved for the rest of my life and making crowds go crazy.

That said, somehow I've seen KISS live six times and have managed to never hear them play Strutter, but that's definitely a case of a band having more must-have songs than can reasonably fit in a setlist.

[Hit Girl]

They should do it. Always make the crowd happy. New tracks should be sparingly introduced, often with a "hey guys, guess what? we've written a new song, would you like to hear it?" build.

[Vice honcho room temperature]

Aug 27, 2019 6:55:25 GMT -5 willywonka666 said:

I believe I'd feel a bit of a responsibility to play certain songs. Ideally, I'd like to throw in covers and surprises often, but I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but after an artist slows down and doesn't release albums as frequently, I don't find the later material very interesting or catchy, and I'd rather quit writing if I couldn't even interest myself and go out an play the hits.

Billy Joel did this. Kinda just said I wrote everything I feel I can and just is doing shows where he plays his old stuff

[A Platypus Rave]

Aug 24, 2019 11:16:04 GMT -5 nickcave said:

Aug 24, 2019 10:18:50 GMT -5 OldDirtyBernie said:

I can see where it would be annoying, especially in cases like Faith No More where they had a catalog of music but would get people clamoring for Epic just because it was their "radio" song. Not saying they should necessarily outright refuse, but I'd imagine it would become very frustrating.

Yeah, Radiohead never play Creep for that reason. Also, the rest of their discography is so vastly different from that song it would stick out badly in the setlist.

I mean they even made a song talking about how f***ing sick they were of playing Creep

Aug 24, 2019 12:45:16 GMT -5 brown bricks said:

Also, this topic makes me think of this (Stars around 1:11):

from my understanding that was less about having to play the song and more about the show they were on were just using the CD version of the song for backtracks so they made a massive mockery of it.

[MC Blowfish]

I'm sure it gets old playing the same songs over and over. Especially if it's a hit. Also some songs are very personal and they might want to keep performing a certain song after awhile.

For example, my wife loves Andrew McMahon. He had a hit with a song called "Konstantine" with his old band. For years he would play it, but he doesn't play it anymore since he's no longer in that place anymore. I also think he wrote it about someone other than his wife and she gets upset about it. I could be wrong on that last one.

[Alice Syndrome]

There's a Nirvana show from 1992 in Brazil, where the crowd were complete shitheads to the all girl band they'd brought in as a support act, so Kurt decided to piss off everyone with a no hit setlist.

The downside is this was still an absolutely amazing show.

[Hit Girl]

Aug 26, 2019 23:49:37 GMT -5 paulbearer said:

Woman in love (saw Barbra twice in concert....imo it seemed like she just wanted to get it over with , felt half hearted)

Ironic given that she's really in love, with Thanos' dad.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

You're an artist. You make the art you want to make. If people want to pay to see it, that's their choice too.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Aug 27, 2019 12:36:18 GMT -5 Alice Syndrome said:

There's a Nirvana show from 1992 in Brazil, where the crowd were complete shitheads to the all girl band they'd brought in as a support act, so Kurt decided to piss off everyone with a no hit setlist.

The downside is this was still an absolutely amazing show.

Jim Morrison did something similar. Growing ever tired of having “Play Light my Fire!” yelled at him, he took a look at the audience, didn’t like what he saw and decided to sing the whole show like Betty Boop.

Apparently one kid in the audience if Jim could have the balls to do that, he could do something too. Grew up to be Iggy Pop.

No idea if it’s true but read it in a Morrison bio.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Aug 27, 2019 18:38:06 GMT -5 Cranjis McBasketball said:

Apparently one kid in the audience if Jim could have the balls to do that, he could do something too. Grew up to be Iggy Pop.

No idea if it’s true but read it in a Morrison bio.

Sort of true. Iggy had already formed the Stooges at that point, but hadn't decided on a direction for the band or even played a gig.

I had the Stooges. And we did not have the balls to get out and do it. There were two things that made us do it; one was seeing that show (the Doors), we saw that show and I just thought, well, this is so brazen, there is no excuse for us not to do it anymore. And the other thing was we went to New York. We had gone to New York a couple of months before that just to check out the scene, and we had never been to a place like New York… we went down around Eighth Street there where all the young tourists hang out, and we met these girls from New Jersey, from Princeton, they had a band called the Untouchable, and we’re like, "Oh, you’ve got a band, sure, ha ha ha," and they said "Well, come to our house and see us play." And we didn’t have anywhere to crash, and they played for us, and they completely rocked, and we were really ashamed.